Blank Slates (plus, book updates!)
From our walk this morning in Central Park. The first snow of the season! I love that feeling: the fresh start, the blank slate.
Tis the season for New Years resolutions, so on that note, let me tell you about something RADICAL I just did. You know about inbox zero? Surely you know one of those people, or maybe you are one of those people, or maybe you aspire to be one of those people. I fall into the latter category. I’ve never actually achieved that level of Nirvana, but I’ve probably gotten as close as having a mere twenty-ish emails in my inbox.
I’m not that great at making official To Do lists, so instead I treat my inbox as my To Do list. If there isn’t an email in there to remind me, then honestly, I probably won’t do it. One result of this is that I send a lot of emails to myself, with shouty subject lines like PAY GARAGE BILL!!!! Another result of this is my perpetual inability to achieve inbox zero, because there are always things I have to do, and I refuse to use those clever features like “Snooze” or “Add to Tasks” because, on some essential level, I don’t really trust the technology. (I recognize this is a problem, but that’s a post for another day.) But that’s not really what’s been clogging up my inbox for years on end. It isn’t the Actual Work I’ve neglected, or important tasks that have fallen by the wayside. Rather, it’s a bunch of articles. Like, a lot of articles. All of which have been sent to me by my friends and family, and which I’ve kept visible in my inbox because they look genuinely interesting, and which I would no doubt enjoy reading (these are people whose taste I trust) but which I’ve just … never gotten around to reading.
When I say years, I mean it. The newest email in my inbox, number 1 of 33, was received at 12:48 p.m. today. The oldest email in my inbox, number 33 of 33, was received at 12:31 p.m. on August 8, 2015. Subject line: The Mob’s IT Department. I am sure that this is a very good article. But I am taking today to admit—to finally, publicly, get this off my chest!—that I am probably never going to read it. I received that email more than six years ago. I was still in my twenties; still working full-time in publishing; still living above the piano bar. Obama was still president! Good grief. I let that article, and myriad others, sit in my inbox through the entire duration of the Trump administration. That is actually insane. For every single day of the Trump administration, I opened my inbox and looked at these same subject lines. The Mob’s IT Department. The War Against Pope Francis. Why the World’s Recycling System Stopped Working. From Crayons to Chemo, He’s Back By Her Side.
Andrew asks me why I do this to myself. Doesn’t it bother you? Doesn’t it drive you crazy? Well, yes, it does. And that’s the point! I left those emails in my inbox as reminders to myself, as entries on my to-do list. I was going to read them eventually! I suppose I had this idea that someday, my Future Self would be sitting at her laptop, ready to take a midday break from writing, and would think, with calm tranquility, Why don’t I read one of those articles?, and would click on one of those long-neglected links, and would settle in (probably while sipping a hot cup of tea), and finally, finally learn about the war against Pope Francis. But six years later, I can tell you … that’s never how it went. My writing breaks usually consist of going to the New York Times, scrolling through the homepage for five seconds, feeling vaguely stressed and vaguely bored, going to Instagram, scrolling for a minute, feeling vaguely guilty and vaguely bored, reaching for my tea, realizing the tea is cold, giving up, standing up, going to the kitchen for a snack instead.
It’s 2022. It’s time for some radical honesty. I’ve realized that I’m never going to become that Future Self. I am going to remain my Present Self, the one whose brain is usually too fried from the day’s work to read any articles that require more than the bare minimum of effort. The one who prefers to spend her lunch break watching cooking videos on Youtube, or looking at unrealistic houses on Zillow. Which leads to this decision: I’ve created a folder in my email to house all those unread articles. The folder is called, very cleverly, “Articles.” My inbox shrank by thirty percent in two seconds! Amazing. Inbox zero, I can practically taste it. And, yes, I created this folder while recognizing that I am probably never (almost certainly never) going to open that folder and actually read these pieces. I should stop lying to myself and just admit that. Make a clean sweep and delete them entirely. But for some reason, I can’t get there quite yet. Radical honesty …. kind of. Baby steps, people. No one said change was easy.
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Speaking of it being 2022: this is the year that Our American Friend is coming out! The new year has given me a good kick in the pants, and I’m gearing up for publication day on February 15. I’ve updated my website (click here!) with event listings, with possibly more to come. The pandemic means we’re having to be a little bit play-it-by-ear, but as of now (I think) the plan is for the New York and Philadelphia events to be in-person (and simultaneously livestreamed), and the DC and Connecticut events to be virtual.
I’m incredibly honored to be sharing these events with such stellar writers: Jonathan Darman at the New York Society Library (February 15), Jo Piazza at the Philadelphia Athenaeum (February 22), and Jennifer Close at Solid State Books in DC (February 24). I would be so thrilled to see you there, whether in-person or virtually! The more the merrier. Most of these events will ask you to register in advance, so I encourage you to do that :)
This book has been a long time coming, and while this pre-publication stretch comes with some nerves, I am mostly just excited. Excited to share this story with you, to hear what you think, to introduce you to the characters who kept me company through the insane years we’ve been living through. We’re now less than six weeks away from publication, and the book is available for preorder (as hardcover, ebook, and audiobook) from Amazon, Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, iBooks, or Indiebound. Thank you! I love you.